“the idea that we can construct a linear chain of causality and determinism linking a nebulous "world system" to my village in one huge inescapable organism of capitalist exploitation and brutalization is ahistorical.”
Your point is well taken and I respect the impulse to preserve some degree of autonomy for people in your village. I think this is necessary if local people are to be deemed to possess some human dignity, after all, autonomy is a measure of humanism. However, the idea that you consider ahistorical is the very idea that Chinua Achebe ascribes to the historical situation of his childhood in Home and Exile. He talks about the depth of imperial and global penetration of his village in the chapter “My Home under Imperial Fire”. So, different people see this same historical process differently and there is validity to both arguments in my opinion. For example, how could one not agree with your statement that “Some problems are MORE local than they are connected to the marauding monster of global capital. Others are not.” The essayist Adebayo Williams once wrote that what we mean by conspiracy theory may well be that the activities of the rich industrial nations are having unintended consequences one everyone else. By this he tried to redefine conspiracy not as a strategic plan hatched out in suite 2010, Broadway, NY. But with Cheney paying fines for inducing Nigerian officials with bribes, with Shell infiltrating every arm of the Nigerian government with its employees as the Wikileaks cables show, why should we not talk about real and deliberate conspiracy. This is where I disagree with Kolapo. The leaders are from the people but once in power, chased by Cheney dollars and mingling with the great white sharks of this world, the most deadly of the sharks, they are no longer part of the people. However, one begins to wonder though whether the people have not been historically and culturally conditioned to respond with tolerance to the abuses and excesses of their leaders.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2010 9:51 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?
Bode, the idea that we can construct a linear chain of causality and determinism linking a nebulous "world system" to my village in one huge inescapable organism of capitalist exploitation and brutalization is ahistorical. It erases the lives, the actions, and the agency of a vast body of people in the Third World. It is also a tad too conspiratorial for me. That is my problem with the notion that "the inter-state-system" or "world system" explains every local political and economic struggle and dynamic in every African postcolonial state--that every crisis in the postcolony is traceable to past and ongoing intertwinements and integrations of Africa in(to) the global capitalist system. You talk about colonial legacy; what about problems of representation, culture, resource distribution? Besides, is colonial legacy one uniform universal reality? Does it not manifest differently in different countries? Do these issues not break down along different trajectories in different countries, shaped by local and localized realities? Some problems are MORE local than they are connected to the marauding monster of global capital. Others are not. That is why I have trouble tracing every political decision, choices, and personalities made and produced in Africa to the structural determinism of an all-consuming World system. There are clearly problems (institutional/bureaucratic, leadership, and structural) that are embedded in local concerns and require local and localized resolutions--structural or otherwise. Local actors (leaders and followers alike) can and should resolve them. Then there are problems of global political economy that should be understood and confronted not (only) in local and localized settings but in a global context. The global triumph of unrestrained capital (and its consequences) is the obvious one.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Femi Kolapo <kolapof@uoguelph.ca> wrote:
Does the quality of followership matter somewhere along the line - however we may define this followership?. For Nigeria, and for other post independence African countries, each corp of leaders that we have had has emerged from among the people, from the body of the followership. At what organic point are we correct in divorcing followership from the leadership in the matter of bad leadership?
can we justifiably ask why are African people are unsuccessful or unwilling or unable to hold their leaders accountable - never able to develop a broad united front across various divides to be the real king makers? Why are our leaders not constrained by conventions of community, if indeed everybody shares ownership of the community; why are they not restrained by shared moral or ethical values or shared interest in some form of development to refrain from stealing; to allow for free and fair elections, and to deploy their agency creatively against all sorts of debilitating structural constraints that may exist.
We imply that leadership is or should always be morally right but it seems like an assumption that supposes good leadership to be an innate natural condition (perhaps in leaders of normal societies versus the abnomality of the injuriousness and mediocrity that our leaders have inflicted on us.) Might we not smell the problem of structural constraints here too on the part of the people (those being led): of the problem of the modern nation-state; of the structural contents and context of power and wealth sharing and whether or not these produce conviction and a sense of duty and entitlements in citizens such that they consistently and effectively organize and insist and enforce their demands for accountability and probity on their leaders. How independent of the followership are the leaders - at least in the post-colonial African context? Are we to suppose that the seeming helplessness of African peoples in the hands of their leaders continue a trend since the slave trade or even before?
------------------------
F. J. Kolapo,
(Associate Professor of African History)
History Department * University of Guelph * Guelph * Ontario * Canada* N1G 2W1
Phone:519/824.4120 ex.53212 Fax: 519.766.9516
----- Original Message -----
From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:41:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?
Structural catalysts and constraints are important, but I insist that in many local or localized struggles, these global structural realities are of little consequence. Look, guys, these African leaders are ahead of us: they are adept as using these structural realities as alibi for their incompetence and greed and for improving their personal economic and political fortunes at the expense of their citizens. In my opinion, it is therefore a little escapist to continue to chase after the distant unseen forces of the global capitalist order and to psuh fantastically for elusive and Utopian egalitarian ideals in the spirit of an anti-capitalist International while local actors in Africa and elsewhere wreak havoc on their citizens. Even more unacceptable is to pursue this revolution-on-a-world-scale ideal while looking beyond the evils of our proximate leaders who are clearly culpable for blaming every failure of theirs on the evil, menacing global capitalist hegemony even while colluding with the same hegemony to bilk and brutalize their citizens. And, Ken, please don't get us started on socialism. The track record is as depressing as that of "unrestrained capitalism." It's not really about ideology but the ABUSE of it. Socialism was abused by rapacious and incompetent rulers to entrench and manufacture misery and inequality and to engender political crisis and fissures in several African domains. Just as capitalism and its associated accumulative tendencies are being serially abused by African leaders today to spread misery and stoke crisis. So, you see, it still comes back to leadership and LOCAL institutions. We need a critical mass of leaders and elites who will resolve to do what is right and to govern or formulate policies selflessly. I agree that this would not magically cure all of our ills and that the fundamental global capitalist relations impose restrictions on what ultimately can be done. But there is ample room for maneuver and for self-interested, people-oriented action. It takes a good, selfless leadership to take advantage of these narrow interstices.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 8:10 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
kwame
here is another example of where it isn't simply leadership, or individuals, but systems that drive the situation. consider russia: the minute it passed from a state controlled economy to a free market there was a rush to accumulate capital by any means, with horrible scenes of impoverished pensioners, of gross billionaires, of unreal criminality extending its benefits from the property on the riviera to the banks of brooklyn. and then the undemocratic strong arm, the imprisonment of opposition politicians, the mysterious assassination of journalists, the human rights abuses, and on and on. sound familiar?
same people, same history, same same, but new face of russia instantiated by unrestrained capitalism.
when i use the work socialism, it is not for nostalgia. or if it is, it is nostalgia for a just social order, based on principles that oppose everything the results in the above conditions. the free market is a recipe for an oppressive society, and we need to work for something better.
ken
On 12/16/10 9:42 PM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Peace All,
Kenneth, that is great sketch of economic domination by remote
control. I am African American. My African comrades and I go back and
forth on this frequently. Whereas I tend to favor structural
explanations, many of my African comrades tend to point to what is, in
their view, corrupt African leadership. As you rightly note, all
factors must be placed on the table. That said, brother Moses didn't
dismiss structure outright. He acknowledges that its a "culprit," but
a "more distant" culprit.
That brings up a related issue that I wanted to toss out. I think we
still have a poor grasp as to _how_ structural factors shape or
influence human action. Which is not exactly the same as understanding
how a given structure works or functions (your sketch, for example).
And because we don't fully understand how structure constricts and
induces action, we tend to conceptualize structure, spatially, as
"distant." Last, I wanted to note that structural arguments push
against our commonsensical ideas of self-actualizing autonomous human
beings--that are actions are fully voluntary and self-actuated. So-
called "free will" or what liberal academics call "agency." kzs
On Dec 15, 6:10 pm, kenneth harrow<har...@msu.edu> wrote:
moses
while i agree largely with your careful reasoning, there is one point
where i stopped. see it below.
ok, you are a farmer: you are growing a crop that was introduced to your
region during the colonial period. call it, oh, cotton. why not.
the u.s. subsidizes cotton, thus enabling it to undersell mali. even in
the poorest and most dispossessed region, cotton is affected since the
malians cannot put up protective tariffs thanks to the stupid neoliberal
rules that govern the imf. and just in case we forgot, european
subsidies exceed, in percentage, u.s. subsidies, and both the eu and usa
are excempt from imf rules against erecting tariffs.
you live, let us say, in e congo where tin is mined. tin goes out, guns
go in, militias, uganda elites, rwandan generals, all get rich
you live, where? in senegal where those trawlers have harvested all
the damn fish in the ocean, driving thousands to take piroques north,
endangering themselves and drowning, only to get to a xenophobic europe
ready to lynch them en mass, especially in italy which is ruled by a
rightwing maniac.
should i go on? where is that corner, moses, where this economic order
does not matter??
please. i know the leadership works hand in glove with the corporations
that buy the diamonds, with the gun runners that sell the armaments. i
know the chinese stepped into s sudan oil fields when the westerners
moved out. please, where is this remote untouched corner?
i know, it is in the sahara. wait, what is africom surveilling? why are
they expending millions to expend rule over mauretania, why did the
chinese build a superhighway in mauretania. oh, oil. need i go on.
the order that is decimating africa reaches from elite to elite, and the
rest of us, trawled up by those inhumane monsters, are left to cheer on
bono.
we have to recognize ALL these forces if we are to establish a coherent
policy for change. i would very very willingly start with the bottom up
that you evoke, the subalterns that reach in peculiar ways across
countries. all countries, integrated now more than ever into mechanisms
of exploitation of resources and labor.
ken
On 12/15/10 11:53 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
it is my view that for most peoples of the South and the North who are
poor and dispossessed, the global neoliberal order is a more distant
culprit in their predicament than are their proximate leaders and
political actors.
--
kenneth w. harrow
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu
--
kenneth w. harrow
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu
--
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